It's easy to feel sorry for Birmingham school Superintendent Craig Witherspoon. Not that he was almost fired Tuesday, or that he probably will be in a couple weeks. Witherspoon will find a job in a school system that appreciates him.

No, one feels sorry for Witherspoon because he has to deal with so many small minds on the Birmingham Board of Education while working hard to expand the minds of Birmingham schoolchildren.

Witherspoon clearly is going to lose that fight. But there will be a cost.

Board members Emanuel Ford and Virginia Volker use those three to build and massage their own egos, not to help city schools progress. Too, Ford and Volker have been Witherspoon-haters from the start. To their ends, they have used three of the most wanting individuals ever to serve on the school board to make up their coalition so they can continue the destruction of city schools.

Ford, meanwhile, even used Tuesday's meeting, packed with Witherspoon supporters, to berate members of the Birmingham City Council who were in attendance. The disrespect Ford showed was an embarrassment to him and the school board.

It would serve the school system right if City Hall simply washed its hands of the school system. That would mean a loss of lots of money and in-kind support for city schools. But the council shouldn't act like Ford, who has never been a constructive team player in any public position he's held. The city's schoolchildren deserve decent treatment, even if Ford and his conspirators don't give it.

The Birmingham school system may have fallen to a new low from which it can't recover. That will have dire consequences for the city's population, for programs Witherspoon put in place, and for parents who can't simply pick up and move to Homewood or Trussville or Jefferson County. Shame on these five school board members.